


Duality and Craquelure

by Necronon



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, First Kiss, Hannibal is a Cannibal, M/M, POV Hannibal, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-11
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-10-02 14:06:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10219889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Necronon/pseuds/Necronon
Summary: Hannibal smooths a hand up the side of Will’s neck. He watches his eyes flutter almost closed as he turns into it, the warm cradle of his palm still tender and imbued with their recent intimacy--hot with implied desire.Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter await the arrival of the Great Red Dragon. Or: what happened during the time lapse in "Wrath of the Lamb."





	

 

_"It sounds weak to you, even as you say it."_

Hannibal remembers that moment: when Will hadn’t so much as blinked, effectively staying his hand with half-baked verisimilitude. He wonders if Jack will revisit the evidence and easily divine Will's artifice. Maybe he already has, already expects the worst. It’s enough of a departure from Good Cop to entice Hannibal—to make him reconsider murder when the opportunity presents itself as they progress towards their inevitable showdown with the Great Red Dragon.

_Will. You clever boy. The Dragon goes freely to your altar, and you’ve made me your ferryman. What will you do?_

If he’s to allow Will his Becoming, it must be at his behest. Like a chick from the clutch, Hannibal will be the first thing Will sees when his eyes open. He’ll be that shove from the nest before Will’s wings eclipse the sun. He doesn't, of course, expect Will to do just that and take Hannibal along for the ride. He doesn't see it, not yet. Will, always unpredictable. 

Hannibal feels a pang of anticipation as they drive, but he’s careful to conceal it. Will feigns looking out of the passenger window, but Hannibal notices his sidelong glances; and in spite of all the unsaid things hanging heavily between them, their ride to the cliff-top house is a silent one.

Once parked, they near the edge of the bluff to peer out over the steep drop, the Atlantic audible at its base. Hannibal wonders if whimsy draws Will’s gaze across the waters; or if he’s contemplating the agents in position, their angle on the house, how long it will take them to arrive on the scene.

“The bluff is eroding. There was more land when I was with Abigail. More land still when I was here with Mirian Lass.”

“Now you’re here with me.”

“And the bluff is still eroding. You and I are suspended over the roiling Atlantic. Soon, all of this will be lost to the sea.”

Hannibal leaves Will to contemplate the sentiment as he nears the home and plucks a key out from behind a false brick face in the foundation. Will eventually joins him at his side, sparing him an inscrutable glance before crossing the threshold, but proffering Hannibal his back all the same. Hannibal is not so gauche as to pull a cloak-and-dagger. He thinks more of Will, and Will knows it.

"Is that what we’re doing? Eroding?” Will asks as he steps inside and scans the interior. He doesn’t quite look at Hannibal, speaking to him from under the guise of curiosity and wearing a manufactured nuance of contempt in the bend of his brow. But even downcast, Hannibal can spy the tension in the younger man’s stooped shoulders.

“A part of ourselves. Like a snake sheds its skin,” Hannibal says, stepping before Will.

“Blood and breath.”

“Will.” Hannibal dips his head a hair and sets his hands on Will’s shoulders, taking advantage of the exclusive intimacy that Will permits him. Lingering in that space allotted to him, allowed only of him. “Do you trust me?”

“I can’t even trust myself.”

“Of course you can.” He touches Will’s face, a thumb along the contours of his cheek, and Will is recalcitrant—it stings Hannibal. “Is it not your intention to see the Great Red Dragon kill me? Can you live the life left to you once I am gone?”

It’s the first of two times he’ll ask. Will flinches out of his grasp and escapes him, gaze thrown back to the vista of the bluff. The daylight is fading, a muted gray that doesn't quite breach the farthest corners of the room where darkness has pooled.

When Will glances back, there’s something hard in his eyes that Hannibal can’t quite decipher. “Not that.”

“Then what, Will?”

Will lifts his chin, gathering himself up. Hannibal can’t help but smile as he feels the man’s presence begin to push back, radiating. He soaks it up, let’s the stiff line of his own shoulders sag as Will’s straightens. The push and pull of their exchange is a welcome familiarity. Hannibal has missed it.

“Are we forgetting that _you tried to saw open my head?_ ” Will’s jaw clenches.

“You had put me in an awkward position, Will.”

“Awkward. For you?”

“I don’t want to see you dead. I can’t say the same of you, regarding me.” And it’s true. But Hannibal also has no intention of letting anyone else have the honor. Like Abigail was his. Like Bedelia will be his. He’ll give, and he will take.

“Others might see it differently, but I know you came here just as voluntarily. You want this. This... freak show.” Will rolls his lips together and shakes his head, suddenly overwrought. “It’s been leading up to this. For a long time.”

“The lamb, the dragon, and the devil,” Hannibal says with a small nod that he does not raise his head out of.

“And, what, you’re sending the lamb to the slaughter?”

“You’re assuming you are the lamb in this theater.”

“Aren’t I?”

“Are you?” Hannibal cants his head and purses his lips, genuinely curious where Will sees his role. Hannibal himself has only recently re-envisioned him. Will is...

“If I’m not, which does that make you?” Will looks incredulous, a keen edge to his voice.

“I wonder.” Hannibal responds with an earnest solemnity that arrests his company. Will was expecting something else, he suspects. Hannibal wonders at that, too. “By the end of tonight, I imagine we will see.”

“I guess we will.”

Will’s eyes look glazed. Before he can slip too far back into his thoughts, Hannibal calls to him.

“Come closer to me.”

It’s such an odd request that Will does just that, too curious not to oblige him—too accustomed to the organic proximity they so often share.

“I enjoy my time with you.” He means to say something else, but it doesn’t come out right. So he clasps Will’s shoulder instead, and it’s enough.

Will deflates and reflexively reaches for his elbow.

“Yeah, you’ve taken some pretty drastic measures to retain it.”

“Whatever happens tonight, I hope you know that I...”

Will waits patiently, but it does him no good. Finally, Will says, “Hannibal Lecter, speechless.”

“It’s not really necessary. We define ourselves by our actions. Like you did, before. Like you will. Like I will.”

“I don’t under—”

“Look at me, Will. Not just with your eyes. I gave that much to you.”

It’s an indirect affair, but there are no contrivances between them. No more veils. Hannibal draws a sharp breath as Will, for the first time, initiates contact, lifting an uncertain hand to Hannibal’s face like Hannibal has so often done to Will, his fingers still cool from the air outside, sponging away the heat from the sharp ridge of Hannibal’s cheeks. They’re close enough that he can smell the brine still caught in the wild wisps of Will’s unruly hair, an unusual bouquet with the acrid odor of cheap aftershave. Beneath that, earthy-sweet: Will.

“Did you just smell me?”

Hannibal cracks his eyes open, unaware he’d closed them, and says, “Yes.” He’s about to apologize when Will interrupts him.

“I’m used to it—I have dogs.” Will chuckles, a littler exasperated. He sounds exhausted.

“Are you likening me to a dog, Will?”

“No, I—I meant it’s fine. I like it. It’s... endearing.”

“Oh.”

“Be quiet a minute.”

“Alright.”

Hannibal isn’t sure what to expect—is surprised he trusts Will this far—as he closes his eyes and breathes a little unsteadily through his mouth, fingers traipsing over the domes of his lids, tracing the steep rise of his brow, softly, then down again, to—

Hannibal’s eyes flash open when a thumb catches on his lower lip and pulls the soft flesh down, briefly exposing the shelf of his bottom teeth.

Will looks transfixed, pupils blown, his own lips working open a little as he plays along Hannibal’s, a voyeur to the pliant shape of his mouth. Hannibal watches Will watch him, and it takes a moment for the revelation to dawn. To realize that Will is kissing him with errant fingers, indulging in the idea of it. Imagining.

Hannibal parts his lips a little, as if to speak, but instead sets the very tip of his tongue against the side of Will’s thumb, a gesture so minute that only Will, knowing Hannibal for the purposeful man that he is, could guilt him for it. Hannibal expects the hand to retreat, for Will to wake up and tear away—when it doesn’t, when he doesn’t, Hannibal sucks the digit into his mouth.

Will startles and makes to yank his hand away, but not before sucking in a sharp breath; and not before Hannibal has time to catch it by the wrist, curling fingers over the top so that he can apply the pressure of his thumb to the tender center of the man’s palm. It’s an equally intimate gesture and earns Hannibal another helpless flinch.

“Will,” he says, allowing the man a moment. Then taking it away. “Do you want to kiss me?”

Had Hannibal not been entirely attuned, so saturated in the fiber of Will’s being, he would have missed the way the younger man’s pupils dilated, the way his nostrils flared around a silent but shuddering breath. The staccato of the pulse in his wrist as Hannibal’s thumb deviates.

Will huffs and sneers, or at least makes a good attempt at it. “Y-Yeah, I’m sure that’d make a _fascinating_ footnote in my patient journal.”

“There are no more journals. We burnt them. Together.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do,” Hannibal concedes. His chest deflates with a measured exhale before he adds, “You’re indecisive.”

Will’s brows furrow, drawing neat lines across his forehead. “About?”

“When you deflect like that. You’re indecisive.” One of Will’s dark brows darts up, and Hannibal mercifully clarifies: “A kiss. Or, more accurately, if it’s such a good idea. You certainly want to.”

Will immediately adopts an expression that suggests Hannibal has said something outlandishly risque, and Hannibal does his best not to smile, or something worse, in spite of himself.

“Is this going to be another Hobbs, Will? Haven’t we moved beyond that?” Hannibal ducks his head, shadows pooling around his gleaming eyes as he openly inspects him. “Do not deny yourself.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No, I—”

“I’ve often wanted you, Will.”

“W-What?” Will looks alarmed.

“Not just a piece. Not just your mind. All of you. In every way that I might have it. I’d rather I didn’t.”

“Easier to eat me, huh?”

“I tried,” Hannibal confesses, expecting his frank admission to startle him, but Will is unfazed.

“You would have been disappointed. Still hungry, with my corpse at the head of your table. No one hanging off your every word. No mouse, just an empty maze.”

“No mongoose under the house. I would have been immensely disappointed. I should thank Mr. Crawford.”

A beat passes, Will’s wrist flexing in his loose grip—Hannibal would have released him if he’d pulled—then Will licks his lips, takes a breath, and asks, “Do you want to?”

“ _Yes_ _,”_ he says, something predatory creeping into his tone. “But I wanted you to want me to.”

“I do.”

It’s what he’s been waiting for: an admission of want. Irrefutable alongside all those hungry glances. Alongside the hands scrabbling at the front of his sweater, pulling him down the inch or two necessary to bring their mouths together.

It’s awkward and poorly aimed, but he manages to close his mouth over Will’s, swallowing a sound: it’s that desperate, trembling plea that Hannibal has similarly earned with a knife. It was beautiful then, and it’s beautiful now. The future just as potentially bleak.

Then the dam breaks, and Will is kissing _him_ , biting, starved—Hannibal feels an incisor split his lower lip, bleeding between their moving mouths. Will groans, and Hannibal almost does in turn, but he is too busy greedily swallowing down the evidence of Will’s reciprocation, along with some of his own coppery blood.

Will must have had a moment of clarity, because he breaks away and says, “Damn it, _Hannibal_ ,” looking for all the world like he’s dropped a priceless vase, rather than kissed his ex-therapist, AKA Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter. Then Will licks his lips and comes back in again, a little more steadily, and sucks at his pouting mouth, Hannibal daring to set his hands at the top of Will’s hips while he nips at him. It’s a while before they break apart again, and when they do, Hannibal hears him gulp down some much-needed air.

“Damn it,” Will says again, and Hannibal says, “Yes,” agreeing to nothing in particular, his lips still aching.

Hannibal smooths a hand up the side of Will’s neck. He watches his eyes flutter almost closed as he turns into it, the warm cradle of his palm still tender and imbued with their recent intimacy--hot with implied desire.

Will looks exquisitely erotic, curls framing his unassuming face like one of Botticelli’s saints—Hannibal the skulking devil at the canvas corner—and his mouth a guilty red with the stain of Hannibal’s blood. Will is open to him. Only him. Dissected into his myriad pieces so that Hannibal can appreciate their nuance: the complex whole they once were. The teacup, each shard sharp in his grip. It is interesting to see the yolk of his passion diffused through Will, as if seeing a part of himself in a new way. The heady closure of the void between them—a well of hurt and obsession that might as well have spanned oceans—that had been too vast to be reconciled by words alone.

Hannibal brushes back a few stray curls. “The Great Red Dragon might decide to kill you after all. I can’t imagine we seem the enemies you’ve previously made us out to be. He’ll think we’re—”

“—conspiring?”

“Something like that, yes.” Hannibal looks at Will, considering. “I think I’ll change. I have attire in your size as well, if you’d like to do the same.”

Will, still recovering, is slow to respond. Surprised. Then dubious.

“You have a change of clothes for me here?”

“Several, in fact. I’m an excellent judge of measurement, as you know.”

“If by ‘judge of measurement,’ you mean your looking in my closet, under the guise of bringing me breakfast, then yeah.”

“I was just being meticulous.”

“I might go with _unsettling_ or _fussy_ , but that still doesn’t answer the question.”

“I like to be prepared.” When Will narrows his eyes, still nonplussed, Hannibal helpfully supplies: “For any circumstance in which you _do not_ return home after dinner.”

He waits for it to sink in, and when it does, Hannibal isn’t disappointed. Will Graham flushes from his cheeks down to the snippet of collar peeking out from atop his button-up.

Will clears his throat and turns away (keeping his eyes on Hannibal) as if the odd angle of his body will shield him. “A little presumptuous.”

“Presumption based on observation.”

“But you never asked.”

“No.”

Will paused. “And if I never stayed?”

“You didn’t. It wasn’t a priority. You stayed, in other ways. You are here now. I am grateful for that.”

“Are you?” Will laughs, incredulous. “ _Doctor Lecter_.”

“Yes, Will?”

“So this is it. Isn’t it.” Will’s voice is soft; he sounds reverent as he looks outside towards the bluff then back at Hannibal, expression unfettered in a way that always accentuates his boyish features, poorly hidden beneath a few days of stubble.

“It seems so.” Hannibal’s eyes thin with a slight, if not somewhat dour, smile.

 

 

 

Hannibal doesn’t dress to the nines—there is little need for a suit, wool or Person, in the company he is and will shortly be keeping—instead choosing a crew-necked sweater and a charcoal blazer, either still leagues better than the prison jumper folded into a neat square at the corner of the bed. He’s observing the final product in a dresser mirror when he sees Will, over his shoulder, inspecting some paintings on the far wall. He knows them well, has placed them side-by-side for a reason, and is immediately curious as to what Will has surmised of them.

“Ah,” he says, turning and stepping carefully closer, as if not to interrupt the other man’s train of thought. “Beksinski, to the right. And to the left...”

“Your _Primavera._ ” Will acknowledges him with the slightest deviation of his gaze; it’s not quite towards Hannibal, but askance. “I never really liked Renaissance paintings. Surprised you have anything but. This one”—Will faces the Beksinski—“is honest.”

The painting depicts several intricately textured obelisks populating an ominous horizon that’s diffused with the colors of rust and earth. Atop each is set what appears to be an assembly of bones and sinew, what might be the vestiges of men or some endoskeletal vertebrate turned open for exhibition.

Hannibal affects a look of skepticism as he peers at Will. “And the _Primavera_ isn’t?”

“No,” Will says, turning to face Hannibal, hands in his pockets. “Botticelli is concealing something. It’s...”

“Behind the veil.”

“Yeah.” Will’s brows furrow as he deliberates, a hand rubbing unconsciously at his jawline. “But there’s something they have in common. They’re not hanging together by accident.”

“You’re correct,” Hannibal admits. “I dare say I don’t enjoy the nihilism of the Beksinski alone; but paired there is a delightful juxtaposition.”

“Identically different.”

“Different men, shaped by different societal ideals, or lack thereof. Either, arriving at a scarcely different conclusion. A duality. On one side of the coin, we have communion and love—and perhaps the atrocities done in their name, veneered and made consumable. A whisper.”

“The other side,” Will adds carefully, “isolation and pestilence. A world without. Hard to digest, but in retrospect, beautiful. A tribute. A shout.”

They remain thoughtful beside one another, until Hannibal glances sidelong and softly says, “I regret not being able to cook for you one last time.”

There’s an unspoken question in that statement. He watches Will’s expression closely as the man pivots and goes through the motions of meeting his eyes—looking first at his knees, then up to his lapels, and finally, with a tightening of his lips, into his eyes. But only with Hannibal does he not immediately look away, an exception Hannibal has noticed for some time.

“I would have liked that,” Will says, sincere.

They gaze at each other for awhile, each trying to discern something for themselves, Hannibal’s expression _Primavera_ -polite, conciliatory—Will’s, the succinct Beksinski.

Hannibal briefly wishes he could step outside of himself and admire them, side-by-side, the allegorical panorama of art exhibited behind their kindly contrasting figures: Hannibal’s hands clasped at the small of his back, Will’s hiding in his pockets. In Hannibal’s bedroom, of all places.

He aches with something he can’t quite compartmentalize.

Hannibal reaches across the threshold and presses a hand to Will’s back, the gesture decisively intimate when his palm lands a scant inch too low so that it sits more atop Will’s hips than to his middle. More intimate still when Will pushes into the touch.

They have come such a ways, the body-riddled tract behind them no longer serviceable. They’re hurtling forward. Point of no return.

“Well," Hannibal says, “perhaps a drink instead?” He’s thinking more of the length and sharpness of the corkscrew than the wine.

Will doesn’t consent, only follows him out of the room when he goes. Out of their private moment and into the surveillance of the FBI spotters and, undoubtedly, the Great Red Dragon. It is almost dark now. Where and what bodies lie in the wake of what’s to come, he cannot know.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes I art, too. Drop by on [tumblr](http://thenecronon.tumblr.com/).


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